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Category Archives: Salon

Mythology = Glamour. Literally everyone looked so beautiful at our annual Xmas party. We honestly expected a little more debauchery with this creative crowd but we had the sexiest and prettiest gods and goddesses to hang out with all night. The 80’s, Gianni Versace vibe created by Michael O’Rourke (dPT’s Mill Valley salon star colorist and our resident party planner) made this party a big hit and just added to the mix of frivolity at the Supperclub.
You outdid yourself again Michael.

As a hairdressing company that was founded in the 80s in San Francisco, we have witnessed the LGBT community take great strides and have always supported it’s advancement. Whether it’s contributing to the fight against AIDS or supporting marriage equality, we have watched and cheered as the world has changed. So it is no surprise that we were thrilled to participate in both the LA and NY GLAAD Media Awards this year.

GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), is an organization that protects and uplifts its community. Each year they hold the GLAAD Media Awards to reward actors, movies, directors and personalities who have accurately and positively portrayed the LGBT in the media. Our part was to provide hair touch ups backstage and celebrity gift bags courtesy of Kerastase and Shu Uemura as well as silent auction items. We needed some of our most talented stylists so we brought along Creative Director Moises Villa, educators Nona Zandinejad, Amy Hsueh, Diana Luong and John Mok. We had a ton of fun and were thrilled to style hair for a great cause.

The pressure is on every year to top all of our fun and fantastic Xmas parties past but Andrew and Michael O’Rourke (party planner and Palo Alto colorist) have done it again and they went BIG at the Infusion lounge. Ideas started flowing in January of 2013 with our desire to celebrate our silver anniversary while fantasizing about where we’ll be in 25 more years. Just returning from London’s Salon International hair show, Andrew was inspired by parametric design and incorporated his ideas along with Michael’s into this years theme—The Future is Now dPT 2038. It’s always hard to pick the top 3 winners for the evening, we had a 5th Element Lilu look alike 1st place winner- Maclaine DeFelice, Maggie Ponicsan who looked like she jumped out of a video game and John Mok who called himself a futuristic space elf. The amazing D.J. Chris Clouse kept everyone dancing all the way into the future.

It only took one special fund raising dinner for the partners at dPT to see what buildOn was doing for teenagers in need and everyone was on board to help this organization raise money for a good cause. Timely enough, we already had the dPT flea market idea in the works and it was then a simple decision to bring the two ideas together. It was a recipe for success—- A group of like minded hairdressers with big hearts and stuff to make or sell along with Maya Batki, our dPT community organizer acting as director for the event. Of course we couldn’t have done this without our friends, clients, sponsors and employees.

Tonight the whole staff was treated to a live documentary of the hair industry from the 1960’s until now, narrated by a first-hand witness, and our beloved co-worker, Peter Wood. I am personally still vibrating with excitement, as Peter is basically a living legend and universally loved and admired by anyone who knows him.
Peter put together a slide show of images depicting his story, both professional and personal, and shared it with our entire staff. His story begins in London in the early 1960’s. Peter began his career at Vidal Sassoon as an apprentice. In the years that followed he got a bird’s eye view of the hair revolution that Vidal Sassoon inspired and was one of only 40 people who were trained to do these highly specific, and heavily sought after haircuts. His talent exposed him to many icons of the 1960’s, moved him to Toronto, then to San Francisco where he opened his own salon. His story ends with him meeting Kim and Andrew Todd in the late 1980’s and joining their original staff when they opened diPietro Todd.
Peter, like very few successful hairstylists, has absolutely no ego, making it even harder to sniff out his accomplishments. It was so great to hear his autobiography and to have some light shed on an era of hairdressing I know very little about. History is a powerful tool and the more you go back and discover the more you move forward and learn. It was so refreshing to hear a man say that after over 50 years of cutting hair, he still genuinely enjoys it. Even more refreshing is hearing him say that his greatest accomplishment isn’t rising to the top of his profession, but his marriage to his wife.

Breathing new life into diPietro Todd Salons + Academy is what Andrew and I have been committed to doing since 1988 when our doors first opened. With that being said, we’re very proud to announce that we recently brought Amita Moticka and Sam Hayes into our partnership for our Mill Valley and Union Square locations. They both have been working at diPietro Todd for 15+ years and have contributed so much to our success that we couldn’t be more delighted to have them officially join our team as partners. After the big announcement to the staff they all responded with rounds of applause and unanimously said they were very excited to see them both get more involved. We’ll all have to wait and see the new mood they create while adding it to the mix at diPietro Todd. I have faith that everyone will enjoy the journey.

One of the things I love most about this business and hairdressers in general is their love of ‘giving back’. Historically, the beauty industry has been, and continuously is, one of the most generous communities. I’ve been involved in charitable causes since before my teens and I’m so happy I’ve picked a career which supports and encourages such endeavors.

On May 3rd myself and some of the diPietro Todd partners and managers had the pleasure of sponsoring and attending the 2013 BuildOn Bay Area Dinner at the Saint Francis. BuildOn is a nonprofit organization which takes high-risk kids and gets them involved in community service and outreach programs, raising funds to then build schools in third world countries. All of us were touched by the students’ stories and look forward to continuing our support to this cause (in that one evening BuildOn raised over $720k!).